


The Secret's In The Telling

by perfectlystill



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Infidelity, F/M, Pining, Post Episode 4.17: Wicked Little Town
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-02-23 08:06:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23741593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perfectlystill/pseuds/perfectlystill
Summary: The knowing has always been difficult for Archie, a complicated untangling of feelings and doubts, worries about being wrong clouding his clarity. Betty always seems to just know, just as she knew how to solve for X or the metaphor of the green light.Archie and Betty after 4.17.
Relationships: Archie Andrews/Betty Cooper
Comments: 39
Kudos: 165





	The Secret's In The Telling

**Author's Note:**

> I think everyone's thinking about the consequences of 4.17, so here's my attempt at wrapping my head around the direction we might be heading in. Except I made absolutely no effort to incorporate the stills we have of 4.18 into it. Oh, well! I still hope the general emotional journey ends up tracking.
> 
> The title comes from the Dashboard Confessional song, as though we're still living in the peak era of teen dramas! Enjoy.

Sleep is elusive, coming and going in fitful spurts all weekend. Archie vacillates between gut-churning guilt and the warmth of the memory. When the sun peeks over the horizon and his body gives in to the pull of exhaustion, his mind replays it. The moment ghosts across his skin: Betty’s soft hand cupping his face, fingers carding through his hair, his palm splayed against the small of her back, the wrinkle of her cotton sweater along his heart line. 

Archie jolts awake. He presses his fingertips to his mouth and blinks, eyes aching with lack of rest. Staring at the ceiling, he attempts to process everything: Veronica and her faith in him, the love that pulses between them strained and complicated; Jughead, his best friend, a trust binding them, buried beneath his ribs; and Betty, his oldest confidante, his favorite person to laugh with and cry with, the smell of cinnamon and nutmeg, the cozy feeling of a fluffy blanket, and the comfort of home. 

He glances at his window, curtains half-closed.

He knows.

The knowing has always been difficult for Archie, a complicated untangling of feelings and doubts, worries about being wrong clouding his clarity. Betty always seems to just know, just as she knew how to solve for X or the metaphor of the green light.

But he knows now. 

It’s better than not knowing. It’s worse, too.

The knock on his door pounds against his headache, and when Archie swings it open, he finds Betty. She fiddles with the strap of her bag, smile pressed tight and uncomfortable. The circles underneath her eyes match his own.

“Walk me to school?” she asks.

They used to walk to school together every day, catching up as though lifetimes passed during the few nighttime hours they were inside their homes. The tradition faded to a rarity until it tapered off completely. The thought ping pongs inside Archie, refusing to settle. He hopes it’s not a predictor of what comes next.

“What about Jughead?” he asks. 

“He went in early to talk to Mr. Collins.”

“Oh. Okay. Sure. Just give me a minute.”

“Of course.” Betty nods, big eyes wide.

He lets her in while he discards his half-eaten bowl of cereal and zips his bag. Betty loiters around the kitchen entry, pulling at the hem of her sweater. Archie feels her eyes on him, but when he glances up, her gaze darts away. 

Their walk starts slow and silent. Betty’s hands close into fists by her sides, and Archie shoves his into the pockets of his letterman jacket. They take uneven steps until they turn the corner and their elbows brush.

“We should--” 

“I’m sorry--”

They start and stop simultaneously.

Betty offers another minuscule, unsettled smile, and Archie returns it with a shake of his head.

“Sorry,” Betty says. “We should probably talk about the...” she pauses, swallows. “In your garage.”

“The kiss, yeah.”

She nods, lips pursed. A faint blush blooms high on her cheeks. It would be nice under different circumstances. “Yeah. We should probably just clear the air and move on. It was a mistake.”

“A mistake?” Archie asks, attempting to keep the crack out of his voice and expression neutral. 

“Well, I mean. You love Veronica, right?” There’s a pleading look in her eyes, a hint of fear underneath. Archie’s almost surprised at how easily he can still read her when she lets him. He could always see more than Betty projected when her walls went up because he was beside her, fingers intertwined, but he hasn’t been sure of that in a long time.

“Of course I do.”

She blinks her feeling away too quickly for him to process. “And I love Jughead. So that’s all it was. A mistake.”

It hurts like a blade twisting inside and cutting up his flesh. “So that’s what we tell them?”

“No,” she rushes. “I don’t think we should tell them anything.”

“Betty.” 

“It’s better this way, don’t you agree?” Distress drips off her words, her body rigid. 

Their steps have aligned. Archie’s right foot travels at the same pace as hers before his left follows suit. 

“I don’t want to lie to Veronica,” he says. 

Archie isn’t sure he’ll be able to keep the truth from spilling out. He almost told her when she apologized and has been on the verge of it ever since. Each text begins with a typed and then deleted: _I need to tell you something_ , the guilt urging him to confess just as much as it has halted him. He thinks he’s only been able to stop because he wanted to touch base with Betty first. 

“It’s not lying,” she reasons. “It’s just omitting the truth.”

“I don’t want to do that, either.”

She exhales, turning her head to check that nobody’s behind them. “I know. But if we tell Jughead and Veronica, it’ll hurt them, and there’s no reason to do that, right?”

He disagrees. Keeping their kiss from Jughead and Veronica feels wrong. But Betty’s eyes are wet and imploring, and she sounds settled in her opinion. Archie doesn’t want to risk further heartbreak and complications if Betty is so sure. He’ll try for her. 

“Right,” he agrees.

“Good.” She nods, corners of her mouth pulling themselves into a forced smile. 

Her lips are pink. He knows they’re soft and warm and nice.

Archie blinks, clears his throat and looks away.

Veronica’s hand settles on Archie’s thigh at the lunch table. He tenses, the potato chip between his fingers crumbling. 

She rattles on about prom, but Archie can’t focus on anything she says. Instead, he watches Betty pick at her lunch tray. She’s good at responding to Veronica, contributing little smiles and hums. She keeps the conversation alive while Archie uselessly notes the shape of her mouth until Veronica rubs at the inseam of his jeans. 

“What do you think, Archiekins?”

“Um.” He blinks. “Whatever you want.”

Veronica rolls her eyes affectionately. 

Archie stares at the clock on the other side of the cafeteria until Jughead arrives. He squeezes Betty’s shoulder, pressing a kiss to her temple, and the small bit of food Archie managed to swallow churns in his stomach. 

He tries to focus, but he’s exhausted and tense. He feels Veronica and Jughead’s eyes on him, and Betty’s pointedly not. 

Standing abruptly, Archie’s fork clatters against the table.

“Are you okay?” Veronica asks, eyebrows furrowed and mouth downturned. 

“He has really strong feelings about chiffon,” Jughead quips. 

“I left something in the music room,” Archie says, pointing his thumb over his shoulder.

His face feels warm, and his muscles feel sore, and there’s a dull pulsing behind his eyes. Archie rubs at the back of his neck, walking away before any more questions can be tossed out. 

He didn’t leave anything in the music room, but he finds himself there anyway. A small kernel of honesty. 

An awful mixture of emotion wrestles inside him, and he doesn’t know how to separate the feelings from each other. He doesn’t know which one will win. Archie sits with his head in his hands, taking a few deep breaths until he hears the door crack open. He wipes at his eyes. “Sorry I--”

“Archie,” Betty whispers.

He blinks until she comes into focus, hands behind her as she gently pushes the door closed. There’s something angelic yet sullen about her, the midday shadows dancing around. Archie wants to take Betty’s face in his palms and run his thumbs along her cheekbones. 

“Are you okay?” she asks. Her mouth tenses like she thinks it was a stupid thing to say.

“No.” 

Betty pulls up a chair, knees bouncing. She smooths her hands across the caps, stopping the motion. “It’s my fault.”

“No.” He looks at her. “No, it’s not, Betty.”

She nods, but she doesn’t believe him. Her shoulders are stiff, and she bites her bottom lip, eyes flitting around the room. 

“You really think it was a mistake?” he asks.

Betty freezes, clasping her hands tightly in her lap. “Wasn’t it?”

He shrugs. “I guess. I mean, we shouldn’t have kissed while I’m with Veronica and you’re with Jughead.” Archie waits for her to look at him. Her eyes are a green and stormy ocean, and he thinks -- hopes -- she feels what he feels. “But kissing you didn’t feel like a mistake.”

Blinking back tears, she wipes her hands on her jeans. “But it was, so I don’t know where we’re supposed to go from here, Arch.”

“I don’t, either. But I can’t pretend everything is fine right now. I tried, Betty. I really did, but I can’t do it.”

Someone shouts in the hallway, and they both watch as another student passes the music room. It’s a reminder that they’re not alone here. The lunch period ends in less than ten minutes, and Veronica will probably come searching soon. Archie doesn’t know how Betty convinced Veronica to let her find him instead. He doesn’t ask. 

“I’ll text you. We can meet up later to try and figure this out,” she offers.

Archie wants to touch her hand. He wants to hug her and feel the warm, calming safety of her embrace. He wants to kiss her again. And because he wants to kiss her, he doesn’t reach out at all.

Betty messages him before last period saying they should head to the bunker separately directly after school.

Archie has enough people working at the community center that he’s able to call out easily enough, but the truth is, he’d drop everything to work out their current situation. It sits like a rock in the pit of his stomach, making it impossible to concentrate. He’s too exhausted to get any work done and too weak to safely expel his anxious energy through exercise.

The truth is he’d do anything for Betty. Current problem or not. 

When he enters the bunker, she’s already sitting at the table. She shoots him the realest smile she’s had on her face all day, and his shoulders relax. 

“Hey,” Archie says. He stands awkwardly before she gestures toward the opposite chair. 

“How are you?” Betty asks.

“Good.”

“You look it,” she says softly, her smile tucking itself into the corner of her mouth as she glances down and then back at him.

Shaking his head, he shrugs. “That obvious, huh?”

“You looked more well-rested after we got food poisoning from that restaurant that used to be on Red Pine.”

He remembers. She insisted they start studying for their first high school finals on a Friday night, bribing him with the promise of free takeout. “I was up all night throwing up.”

Betty scrunches her nose. “Me too.”

“Why’d that place close again?” Archie asks. 

“You mean besides the food poisoning?” Her fond smile fills the space with light. “I guess the people of Riverdale don’t like change. Almost every restaurant predates you and me.”

Archie thinks about it, but he cannot recall a single place opening: Pop’s, Little Ciceros, Yen Ching’s. Betty’s right, as usual. “That’s true, isn’t it?”

“Mmhm,” she hums.

Archie looks around the bunker. The bed is made, but the trash bin overflows with takeout containers. Loose papers, pens and clips are spread around the desk, and one of Jughead’s flannels hangs over the back of the chair. 

_Shit_. 

“Betty, I feel terrible.”

“So do I. It’s why I think we should just drop this whole thing. Pretend it never happened and leave Jughead and Veronica out of it.”

Archie exhales. “I don’t know.”

“The guilt will get easier to deal with,” she says, some kind of knowledge coloring her words. “And we deserve to feel like this, but they don’t deserve to get hurt.”

Archie understands where she’s coming from. They got caught up in the moment, they couldn’t help themselves, and they messed up. But he can’t shake his sense of right and wrong. He thinks this omission will fester in his gut until it crawls up his throat like a vine up a trellis. He’ll admit to it at the wrong time, making it seem even worse, turning it into an even bigger secret than it already is, and--

He doesn’t want to forget.

Archie knows now, and he doesn’t think he could erase it from his mind even if he tried.

“I don’t want to hurt them, Betty. But it wasn’t a mistake to me.”

“Archie,” she warns. 

“I think you’re amazing. I’ve been feeling it for a while, but when we kissed? It changed everything. I’ve never felt that with anyone before. I can’t stop thinking about you, Betty. And maybe we couldn’t help ourselves for a reason? Don’t you think we owe it to ourselves to find out why?” 

He rests his hand over hers, and Betty stares at his knuckles.

“No,” she whispers.

It stings. 

“No,” she repeats, stronger this time, pulling her hand away and cradling it as though she threw a bad punch. “No, you can’t do this.”

“I can’t want to be with you?” Archie asks. 

“No! You can’t want it now.” Her voice shakes, anger cresting in her eyes. 

“But I do,” he insists.

“I loved you for so long, Archie. I loved you, and I would have done _anything_ for you to love me back. I would have given up _everything_. But now I’m with Jughead, and I love him, and you can’t just want to be with me after all this time. It’s not fair.” Her lip trembles, and she wipes away a tear that spills down her cheek.

Archie’s heart breaks. He hates watching Betty cry, and it’s even worse knowing it’s his fault. All he has ever wanted to do is make her happy, and he’s spent so much time failing spectacularly. “You’re right. The timing sucks. But I thought maybe if you still feel something...”

“It’s too late.” She shakes her head. “No.”

Swallowing around the lump in his throat, Archie nods.

“Please don’t tell anyone.”

“I won’t,” he promises.

He owes her more than that, but this is what he can give her. 

This is what she wants.

Veronica’s hand wanders up Archie’s bicep and over his shoulder. Her fingers brush across the back of his neck and into his hair, a gentle, insistent scratch against his scalp. 

“Veronica,” Archie says.

“Come on, I know you don’t like the movie,” she answers. “But I can make it worth your while.”

He let her pick an old black and white French film she claims to have seen upward of 100 times. Archie’s trying to pay attention, but he’s not a quick reader, racing against the subtitles and occasionally coming up empty. It doesn’t help that his mind keeps drifting. 

It’s been two weeks since he and Betty decided not to tell anyone about their kiss. She’s been avoiding him, and he misses her. He misses her small, soft smiles, the ones that have been saved exclusively for him since they were four. He misses her patient, lilting voice and her bright, green eyes. He misses sharing things with her. He misses his best friend. 

Archie knows it doesn’t help that he has stopped sharing his life with Veronica, reaching for the mundane, inconsequential details of his day whenever she asks. Everything is stacking up, his guilt eating him alive and body stilling whenever she touches him. Nothing feels the same. 

He still loves her, but it’s different now.

It’s the lying, and it’s the missing Betty, and it’s the knowing. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. He grabs her hand, pulling it away. 

A wrinkle forms between her eyebrows and she frowns. Concern floods her eyes. “Archie?”

“I don’t think we should do this.”

She backs away, studying him. Her gaze narrows and confusion creeps in. “What are you saying?”

“I think we should break up.”

“Why?” Veronica blinks, hurt overtaking her expression.

“I…” Archie flounders. He can’t tell the truth, but lying feels unfair. “Things have been different between us lately, and it’s not right for me to stay with you when I’m not all in and you are.”

“You’re not all in? What are you trying to say? You don’t love me anymore?” Veronica’s all dark, rheumy eyes, pursed lips and accusatory tone. 

“I’ll always love you, Veronica.” Archie means it. She’s supportive, and she has improved his bad days and soaked up the excess of his good ones. He wants her to be happy with someone who will love her without doubt or reservation. Veronica deserves the best, but Archie doesn’t think that’s him. Not for her. 

“But you’re not in love with me?”

“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

Her eyes trace over his face again. It prickles uncomfortably. It feels like she’s trying to dig up private parts of him, thoughts and feelings that aren’t hers for the taking. “This doesn’t make any sense.”

Archie swallows down the truth.

“You don’t just fall out of love with someone,” she insists. “Not out of nowhere.”

Closing his eyes, Archie rakes his fingers through his hair. “I should go.”

Veronica’s face flutters between disbelief and rage, her hurt rippling underneath the surface despite her attempts to bury it. “I hate you,” she says, but there’s little weight to it. 

When Archie closes the door to her apartment, a fresh wave of sadness washes over him, adding itself to the guilt that hasn’t disappeared. There’s not much relief even though he had expected to feel better, if only marginally. Still, Archie knows he made the right choice.

He walks home. The cool spring breeze brushes at his skin and rubs against the warm wetness of his tears. He glances at the Cooper-Jones house as he passes. 

Archie says a quick hello to his mom and her girlfriend cuddled on their sofa, a mirror of what he and Veronica could have had. Toeing off his shoes, he kicks them toward his closet without much care. When Archie looks out his window, Betty’s curtains are drawn closed

Betty finds him at his locker the next day. Archie almost believes he dreamed her up, denim overalls and blushing cheeks and rosy lips. 

“Why did you break up with Veronica?” she asks, a harsh whisper. 

Definitely not a dream.

“It was the right thing to do,” he says, shutting his locker. “I didn’t tell her. I promise.”

“I know.” Betty glances toward the students loitering in the hallway. “She and I would have had a very different conversation if you did.”

“It didn’t feel right anymore. I couldn’t keep pretending with her while wanting to be with somebody else.”

Betty inhales sharply, breath stuttering. The conflict ever-present in her eyes aches inside Archie’s chest. She licks at her bottom lip, rocking back on her heels. “I should find Jughead.”

She moves to turn down the hall, but Archie reaches out, fingertips gentle against her wrist. Little shock waves tingle where his skin touches hers before she faces him again and he reluctantly lets go. 

“How is she doing?” he asks.

Betty sighs, pressing her palm against her forehead. “Not good. She interrogated her dad thinking he had something to do with it.”

“Oh.”

“Veronica’s confused, Archie. She didn’t see this coming.”

“That’s… good though, right?” he asks. “That she doesn’t suspect anything?”

“Yeah,” Betty agrees, scanning his face. Archie likes her eyes on him, feels alive and warm under her careful attention. “How are you?”

“I’m okay.” He lifts one shoulder.

Tilting her head, sympathy presses along the curve of Betty’s mouth. She pulls Archie into a hug, and his shoulders tense before he relaxes in her embrace. Her body is soft against his. Nosing at her hair, Archie closes his eyes, smelling her floral shampoo. His heart races, but he feels better than he has in weeks, and for a moment, that’s enough.

Archie spends a week eating lunch alone in the music room until Jughead drags him back to the cafeteria. Veronica sits across from him, thawing bit by bit and day by day until she settles next to him again. She shoots him a small, embarrassed smile.

Returning it, Archie feels the tension between them draining. “Hey.”

“Hi.” Veronica tucks a piece of hair behind her ear. “Are we still going to prom together?”

Archie chokes on his sip of water.

“As the dumpee, I feel I should have the right to decide,” she adds.

He wipes at his chin with a thin, scratchy napkin, clearing his throat. “Yeah, sure. Whatever you want to do.”

“Together then.” She nods definitively. Her eyes are guarded and the space between them feels larger than it is, but her sincerity reaches across. “We’re both mature enough to be friends.”

“I’d really like that.”

“Awesome.” She sits up straighter, shoulders down and chin up. 

Betty and Jughead slide into their spots across the table, and Betty’s eyes briefly sweep over Archie. He feels her gaze whenever she looks at him now, always hyper-aware of her when they’re in the same place. She has a gravitational pull, and Archie likes being caught up in it. 

“Look who the cat dragged back together,” Jughead chirps, one eyebrow raised sardonically. “I told Betty the breakup wouldn’t last. This will-they-won’t-they, on-and-off again charade is a little 90s, don’t you think?”

Betty drops her head, fiddling with the plastic lid of her fruit cup. 

“We’re not back together,” Archie says. 

She glances up at him, mouth flat and expression veering toward blank. 

“We’ve decided to be adults about this,” Veronica adds. “We’re friends, and we still have prom.”

Jughead tilts his head, pointing his fork at them, mouth half-stuffed with half-chewed food. “I give it until the end of prom night before you two crazy kids are subjecting us to uncomfortably gross levels of PDA again.”

Archie bristles. 

Veronica rolls her eyes. 

Betty forcefully rips open her fruit cup, the juice spilling onto her lunch tray and over her fingers.

As much as Betty distancing herself hurts, Archie sometimes prefers it to the alternative. 

His blood pressure spikes when he sees Jughead’s hand cupping Betty’s cheek, the two of them speaking soft and low and intimate by her locker. Archie grinds his teeth, a hot, thick hurt coursing through his veins as he backtracks, taking the long way to history. 

He looks away when they kiss at lunch, shredding his sandwich between his fingers. His stomach churns and his appetite fades, replaced by a vague, queasy feeling. 

It’s even worse when Jughead slings an arm across Betty’s shoulders at Pop’s because she tenses, eyes flicking apologetically to Archie. She readjusts Jughead’s arm around her and laces their fingers together. 

Archie can handle the jealousy, the longing when he looks out his window and sees the light shining through her bedroom curtains, the empty feeling of his hand with no one to hold. But Betty feeling bad makes him want to risk toppling his carefully stacked house of cards.

She doesn’t owe him anything. 

She has nothing to apologize to him for, and yet, with Jughead’s fingers filling the spaces between hers, she looks at Archie as though she holds herself personally responsible for the tender ache in his heart.

The gym’s mood lighting swirls around the dancing students. Its stale, sweaty smell has been replaced by perfume and corsages, cologne and boutonnières, an undercurrent of bleach and lemon cleaner. Veronica’s waist is familiar underneath Archie’s palms. Her violet, satin dress fits her like a glove, and Archie told her she looked beautiful.

Veronica had ducked her head, a pleased smile gracing her lips. 

“This is fun,” she says, arms draped over Archie’s shoulders as they slow dance. Her thumb brushes against the back of his neck, and he clears his throat. “Archie?”

“Yeah, it is,” he agrees. 

And it has been. 

Archie sees the path to friendship clearing between them. He can look at her without guilt clouding his vision and hold a decent conversation without shame blocking his throat. He really does like her, and the love he has for her remains strong in his chest. A silver lining in all of this. 

“We’re good together,” Veronica adds.

He frowns.

“Just friends,” she clarifies, but hope dances in her eyes. 

Archie doesn’t want to address it right now. He doesn’t want to ruin her night when he has ruined enough already. 

As they sway in a circle, he catches sight of Betty dancing with Jughead. Betty and Jughead pause so he can pull out his phone, and whatever he finds seems to cause an argument. Betty’s eyes widen and she gestures around, the motion sharp.

Veronica says something else, but Archie doesn’t hear it over the blood rushing in his ears as Jughead presses a quick kiss to Betty’s forehead. 

It’s then that Veronica turns her head. 

Archie’s eyes follow Jughead as he exits the gym, leaving Betty with curled fists in the middle of the dancefloor. 

“Archie,” Veronica says.

He blinks. 

She stares at him with sad, heartbroken eyes. Her eyelashes are wet. “It’s Betty, isn’t it?”

“Veronica, I…” He still doesn’t have the words. 

She nods, hands smoothing over the lapels of his jacket. “Yeah,” she whispers. “Of course it is.”

“I’m sorry,” he manages, because he can’t lie to her. 

She shakes her head, stepping back, hugging herself and running her palms up and down her arms as though it’s cold despite the school’s second-rate air-conditioning unit. “The pretending wasn’t pretending, was it?”

“It was at first. I didn’t even know I was falling for her until I already had. I tried not to feel it, but it’s something I’ve never felt before.”

“That doesn’t make it better, Archie. I really believed you even though I knew I shouldn’t have, and then-- _Fuck_.” She wipes underneath her eyes. “I have to go to the bathroom. I’m not crying in front of everyone at my senior prom.”

Veronica storms off, and Archie watches helplessly.

Archie leans against the wall, scanning the crowd. Kevin and Fangs are wrapped up in each other, swaying by the refreshment table. Cheryl dips Toni, kissing a smile into her mouth. The chaperones mill about in conversation with each other rather than doing much chaperoning. 

He looks toward the door. 

Still no sign of Veronica. 

Archie sighs, scrubbing a hand down his face. He doesn’t know if he should try and find her or leave her alone. He fiddles with his phone and considers sending a text, but he feels Betty’s approach before he even unlocks it. 

She smiles shyly. “You wanna dance?” 

Archie doesn’t have to think about it. Not with her looking sweetly at him, wavy hair and pretty blue dress. Not with his heart thumping and his body buzzing. He stretches toward her like a sunflower toward the sky. “Yeah.”

Her grin widens, taking his hand and following him to the edge of the dancefloor. 

It’s déjà vu, the way she clasps her hands together behind his neck, his hands on her hips. 

Archie watches her, tracking the cut of her jaw, the arc of her cheekbones and the slope of her nose. He traces the curl of her eyelashes and the soft set of her mouth. Archie wants to memorize what Betty looks like underneath the hazy prom lights, the blues and pinks and purples. He’s scared to blink for fear that she’ll realize they’re too close with too many witnesses. 

She hasn’t looked at him yet. 

Betty’s eyes wander the room, but then she murmurs his name so quietly he strains to hear it. “I miss you,” she says, eyes locking onto his.

It’s torture just as much as it’s relief. His breath catches. “I miss you, too.”

She pulls him closer, and he goes willingly, forehead shifting to rest against hers as they sway. He wants to splay his hand across the small of her back. He wants to press his cheek against hers to feel more of her warmth. He wants to kiss her jaw and feel her shiver. He wants to whisper that she’s the most radiant person he’s ever known. 

There are so many things Archie wants, but they can all be distilled down into one person.

He wants Betty, but more than that, he wants Betty to have whatever she wants. 

Even if it isn’t him. 

“Where’s Jughead?” he asks. 

“He has a mystery to attend to,” she says, bitterness threading through her words.

“You didn’t want to help?”

“No.” Her eyelashes flutter. “I wanted to enjoy my only senior prom.”

Archie flexes his hands on her hips. “Are you?”

“I am now.”

He exhales, a sharp, sad pain shooting through him.

“Let’s just dance, Arch, okay?” 

“Okay.”

They move to the familiar but unplaced melody, her eyes focused on his, dilated and dark and dizzying. He feels sparks whenever her hand smooths over the hair at the nape of his neck, fingers painting small patterns into his skin. Everything fades except for Betty and the feeling that pulses between them, warm and cozy and serene.

Two minutes of peace.

When the song transitions into the next, Betty cups the back of his neck and Archie shivers. Her mouth fades into a smile and she slips her hand away before grabbing one of his and lacing their fingers together, palms pressed flat. Archie moves his other hand to the small of her back.

“I used to dream about this,” she confesses, thumb swiping over the shoulder of his tuxedo jacket. “The two of us at prom.”

“I’m sorry if I ruined everything,” Archie says. 

She slides her hand up, fiddling with the collar of his white dress shirt. “Arch.”

“You’re my best friend. My favorite person. I’m sorry I was stupid before, but I’ve always been slow on the uptake.” Inhaling a shaky breath, Archie tries to compose himself when he’s unraveling. “I love you. I’m in love with you.”

Betty watches him, eyes swimming with unshed tears, her mouth twisting to keep from trembling. 

“I’m sorry. You don’t have to say anything.”

She swallows, nods. Shifting forward, their bodies press together like dried flowers between pages of an old book, cheek to cheek. It’s as though she knew everything Archie wanted and is kind enough to give it all to him, just for the length of a few mediocre songs at a dance in a high school gym. 

Betty pulls back as the music crescendos, eyes bright and sad. Her gaze flits down to his mouth and back up again. “I want you to know that I still do,” she says. “I can’t. But I still do.”

They part as the song ends, mixing with a more upbeat number at odds with the bittersweet cracking of their hearts. It’s new for him, but Betty’s been living with it for a long time. 

Archie knows that now. 

They both know. 

It’s better, and it’s worse.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback and comments are greatly appreciated. You can find me on tumblr at [amyabbotts](https://amyabbotts.tumblr.com/) or twitter at [saoirseegot](https://twitter.com/saoirseegot). Thanks for reading!


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